On the night it was crowned best drama at the 2013 Emmys and Anna Gunn was named best actress in a drama, “Breaking Bad” offered a rather straightforward, even simplified episode. Perhaps to dot i’s and cross t’s before the final installment, to line up what we know are loose ends, the “Granite State” episode was more literal, less complex than most. Lining things up before the big finish.

Walt makes his escape to a new identity and a remote cabin in New Hampshire, a landscape worlds apart from Albuquerque. The best visual had to be the chemo bag hanging from the deer antlers.

Skyler, terrorized by the neo-Nazis, agrees not to mention Lydia to the police.

Jesse is stuck with Uncle Jack, Todd and the rest of the maniacs who keep him alive in order to keep him cooking meth, 92 percent pure, in fact. The torture continues, as he witnesses Todd killing his girlfriend (“nothing personal” is right up there with “sorry for your loss” in terms of the murderous Todd’s sociopathic responses.)

Walt’s telephone apology/excuse to his son at school reiterates the theme he’s struck from the start: it was all for the family. He made mistakes, but things happened that he never intended. Passive voice, passive father.

In a too-neat coincidence, Walt glimpses his former partners on Charlie Rose at a bar in town. Walter White is gone, they say. The sweet, kind man they knew is no longer out there. They can’t speak to the Heisenberg fellow, but Walter White is no more. That, too, seemed a tad simplified. The transformation, Mr. Chips to Scarface is complete.

Walt is now shaggy, going full Heisenberg with the pork-pie hat; his family home is behind a fence, he’s told. He leads the DEA to his N.H. locale. And that brings us to the finale.

Who scrawled “Heisenberg” on the wall of Walt’s home? What happens to the ricin? Is there any possibility that Jesse Pinkman lives through the finale? How about Walt? Will he answer to cancer or the law or some other finality? Does Lydia live to make more money on the pure blue meth? And does Todd ever get his comeupance? The finale is Sept. 29.

Tonight’s “Breaking Bad” high-octane hour opened with a flashback to the first cook session, before Walt was good at lying, back when he had to practice first what fabrication he would tell Skyler on the phone. You know, when they were first thinking of the name Holly for the coming baby. Just a cold reminder of how far we’ve come.

Okay, poets, let’s deconstruct. “Ozymandias” refers to the Percy Bysshe Shelley poem about the inevitable decay of empires. Walt, who long ago proclaimed himself not just in the drug business but in the empire business, is about to see his empire crumble.

Hank is wounded, but, even as Walt pleads with Uncle Jack to save Hank’s life, we know, “There’s no scenario where this man lives.”
Not even the $80 million scenario? No, not even that.

The inevitable demise of Hank ends in deathly silence. (We knew it was coming since he celebrated his victory over Walt a tad too early, before last week’s shootout; also because tragedy demands this consequence.) We’re left with the indelible sight of Walt crying as he falls to the desert floor. The burial of federal agents Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez in what was the money’s hiding place is just cleanup as usual for Uncle Jack’s neo-Nazi crew.
Walt knows a living Jesse Pinkman remains a threat. So he contracts for that death. First there will be torture.

Walt finally told Jesse that he watched Jesse’s girlfriend Jane (the tattoo artist played by Krysten Ritter) die, and did nothing. “I watched her overdose and choke to death. I could have saved her but I didn’t.” The psychological torture is just the beginning. But the belated confession had less dramatic urgency than it should have.

Better was the Sysiphisean shot of Walt pushing his barrel full of cash uphill, to an Indian’s hut in the desert.

When she does R.J. Mitte turns in a beautifully distraught performance. “Why would you go along?” Junior wants to know.

More lying and Walt packs, demanding the family follow suit. In perhaps the most climactic scene of the hour, after Walt and Skyler fight over a knife and Junior protects his mom from the madman who is his father, once again Walt invokes the idea of “family.” Heartbreaking, really. At long last, after so many dodges and lies, police and federal agents, it’s Walt’s own son who calls the cops on him.

Having abducted 18-month-old Holly, Walt phones Skyler with another ploy. He tells her she’s ungrateful. He blames her for telling Junior the truth, he calls her a “stupid bitch.” Tearfully, she apologizes. All with the cops listening. This is Walt’s way of leaving the family free of any responsibility for his acts. They can’t be blamed if they where under threat of violence. He knows the police are on the line, he wants them to think Skyler was blameless.

After an ironically tender scene of Walt changing a diaper and cooing to the baby, Walt’s most evil-genius self beams through: “Toe the line,” he warns Skyler, “or you will wind up just like Hank.”

He abandons the baby at a fire station. And he’s off, presumably with help from Saul and a new identity.

Two episodes left and zero sympathy remaining for the desperate, sick, empire builder.

Joanne Ostrow has been watching TV since before "reality" required quotation marks. "Hill Street Blues" was life-changing. If Dickens, Twain or Agatha Christie were alive today, they'd be writing for television. And proud of it.